Orange marked hermit crab destroyed coral!

[marineguys]

Our Orange marked hermit crab took down half our yellow polyps last night.

Has anyone heard of Hermit crabs destroying corals?
Stock: 1 Yellow Tang
1 royal gramma
2 clown fish
assorted hermit crabs and snails
frogspawn coral
yellow polyps (minus one half polyps)
55 gal 0 nitrites, 0 phos, 0 ammonia, 15 nitrates, 1.024sg, 430ca,

 

[teen]

the only hermits i see as 100% reef safe are the scarlet hermits, all others are hit or miss imo.

 

[sebae09]

are you talking about a halloween hermit? they are highly preditory. get him out of the tank asap he will finish off the corals when he gets hungry again. take him back to a LFS or put him in a sump/fuge by himself.

 

[ci11337]

Here's a list of reasons why I don't like hermits....
1) Many kinds eat corals and other inverts
2) They can't clean film algea off glass
3) Even the reef safe kind often irratate corals
4) They will eat small bottom fish(gobies firefish) while the rest at night
Your better off to get a varity of snails. Just my $.02

 

[ophiura]

IMO, **NO** hermit crab is 100% safe. This is not unusual at all, IMO, and actually it is true of many types of "algae eating" crabs we put in our tanks. Most are quite capable of eating things we don't want them to.

 

[chipmaker]

I raise the above statement with I do not trust ANY crab period. If you got to have hermits I go with the blue leg variety. I bought two hermits from ***** listed as being reef safe. They were small, had an olive green body with orange bands around their legs, and were right handed. ALmost over night they managed to scrape and gouge a alot of the coraline off my liverock, nip off various polyps, and in genral make a real mess of themselves. I find that most hermits with even handed claws are much safer than the unequal handed hernits are.

 

[clintjj]

I have 5 scarlet reef hermit in my fuge. for eating my acropora I'd move them and they'd go right back to it. Also don't put any large shells in the tank the crabs can get into cause they will!! I had one my daughter got from the beach (shell) boiled it and put into my aquarium the crab got into it somehow (It was about 3" the shell) he then started on my fish then corals. Payback came at the petstore though. (wrasse)

 

[marineguys]

They are large crabs with orange stripes/dots on the legs. They tumble through whatever they want. Off to the LFs they go...
By the way, I like our tiny scarlet and blue legged crabs... they stay away from the corals, don't knock stuff over, and eat lots of algae. We got the orange marked crabs from live aquaria dot com. You can see a pic there. Thanks for the responses!

 

[cannonman]

I don't trust any hermits anymore either but IMO they are a little better when small and seem to become more of a problem the older and bigger they get- they like to taste test my yellow polyps and green star from time to time. They think it's some kind of buffet some days

 

[teen]

ive had blue legs eat zoas right before my eyes. my scarlets dont bother anything, they usually dont climb on frags either. your best bet is anssarius snail, they shouldnt tumble anything over or eat anything besides algae.

 

[reckler]

my blue striped hermit has been caught eating my zoa's from time to time. my blue legged and scarlet crabs don't eat any corals.